Audible Magic, the recognized global leader in digital fingerprinting technology and content identification solutions, today announced that it has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 7,917,645, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Identifying Media Content Presented on Media Playing Devices.” Formally issued on March 29, 2011, the patent, Audible Magic’s fifteenth in the area of digital fingerprinting and content identification, demonstrates the company’s continuing commitment to groundbreaking innovation in this fast developing technology segment.

Specifically, the newly awarded patent addresses the identification of media as it is played on devices such as smart TVs, tablets, set-top boxes, and smart phones. This patent is a fundamental building block of Audible Magic’s SmartID™ system, which enables social TV, interactive advertising, TV commerce, personalization, and other related applications. The patent is a notable addition to Audible Magic’s already impressive portfolio of patents in digital fingerprinting and content identification.

“The awarding of this patent exemplifies Audible Magic’s continued long-term investment in building foundation technology for content identification, and our desire to protect our intellectual property” said Jim Schrempp, Audible Magic’s Vice President of Core Engineering. “The dramatic growth in smart devices and the explosion of social media applications demonstrate the significance and value of this patent in our portfolio.” Audible Magic licenses use of its intellectual property via its portfolio of services.

The company also today introduced the SmartSync System, a solution specifically aimed at synchronizing events on smart devices to content being played from other media playing devices.

Available on iOS, Android, OSX, Linux and Windows platforms, the SmartSync API enables developers to build unique applications for a wide range of devices such as smart TVs, smart phones, tablet computers, game consoles, set-top boxes, and specialized appliances.

Behind the SmartSync System is the power of Audible Magic’s market leading SmartID™ content identification technology. The SmartID technology is based on the company’s patented digital fingerprint technology, which delivers a far more robust approach to digital content identification than watermarking systems.

Unlike watermarks, digital fingerprints require no modification of the original content; are immune to most content transformations caused by compression, timescaling, formats, or codecs; and delivers a higher degree of accuracy and time resolution.

A unique advantage of the SmartSync System is its ability to deliver better than frame accurate time-stamp annotations for media. This degree of accuracy makes it possible to build applications that require close synchronization of audio and video tracks that, in turn, ensure high-quality viewer experiences.

The SmartSync system uses audio captured via microphones on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets or from audio buffers. The technology will continue to 2 work even in noisy environments. Introducing what is called continuous synchronization; the SmartSync system uses a clip of media as short as 6 seconds to get an initial identification and then uses a continuous rolling identification that maintains better than frame accurate time-stamps.

“As an enabling technology, the SmartSync System and API gives developers ultimate flexibility and control in delivering interactivity in a wide-range of applications never before possible,” said Jay Friedman, Audible Magic’s Vice President of Marketing, when making the announcement. “And, our customers tell us our solution is extremely robust and easy to integrate with their applications..”